CHINA: Later this year passengers in Beijing will be able to use ticket gates incorporating facial recognition which have been developed by BII Railway Transportation Technology.
The gates offer two operating modes. In the first, a passenger’s photo is stored on a physical ticket, and when the passenger touches in at the ticket gate this photo is compared with a live image. This ensures that the ticket can only be used by the authorised holder, with only people entitled to discounts able to benefit from them.
In the other mode, a live image is compared with a photo previously uploaded to a database, so no physical ticket is needed. This offers operators the ability to block specified people from entering the network.
The system is currently intended for main line railways, as the processing time can be slower than more conventional ticketing methods on heavily used metros.
